CONTENTS: (i) License (ii) Quick Note (iii) Characters FRANKLIN (All Scenes 1-8) (iv) Historical Notes and Liberties ===== (i) License This play (without significant alterations to the original text) can be noncommercially produced by anyone, anywhere, and distributed in any medium without further permission from or obligation to the author P. Aaron Mitchell than that this entire License section be presented to the audience (in a manner easily intelligible according to the medium). This play (without significant alterations to the original text) can be commercially produced by anyone, anywhere, and distributed in any medium without further permission from or obligation to the author P. Aaron Mitchell than the following: (i) this entire License section must be presented to the audience (in a manner easily intelligible according to the medium); (ii) for each person involved in the production, a "copy" of the play must be newly purchased from paaronmitchell.com (or through approved channel); (iii) on your honor, if the gross revenue of the production exceeds 1 million USD, then 1% of the total gross revenue will be paid to P. Aaron Mitchell as royalty in a timely manner. If you enjoy this play, consider buying a copy of the original text, complete with the author's historical notes, to read at your own leisure, from paaronmitchell.com. ===== (ii) Quick Note If a writer begins with "how to read" something, you should generally run - but maybe this is an exception. This play is meant for internet video. Each scene is quite short, no more than a few minutes at most. The line-breaks are in place to help the actors find the internal music of the dialogue. In the same way, you will likely enjoy it more if you read aloud - but, while reading, simply ignore the line-breaks, reading from punctuation to punctuation as you normally would, and let the rhyme and rhythm of the language emerge. ===== (iii) Characters DAVID HUME, philosopher BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, agent for Pennsylvania in London CHARLES PRATT, Attorney General for the Crown MRS MARGARET STEVENSON, proprietor of 36 Craven Street, Franklin's lodgings THOMAS PENN, Proprietor of the Colony of Pennsylvania, son of William Penn RICHARD PENN, son of William Penn and brother to Thomas Penn WILLIAM PITT THE ELDER, member of Parliament, future Prime Minister of Britain SERVANT GIRL WILLIAM PENN, non-speaking, original Proprietor of the Colony of Pennsylvania MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, non-speaking ===== FRANKLIN ===== 1. (Franklin's room in the house on Craven Street, London.) H - Hume (to enter), F- Franklin ----- H (entering): Well that rascal Russel took his time to check your facts and fuss with how your thunder apparatus acts, but he's a genius - mind! - and he finds a few improvements. F: Wonderful. H: Here are his inducements to you. To use the rain pipes down and then run the wire through the ground to prevent loose ends and keep it sound from accidents - ah, but there's no sense in this intens -ive explanation. I'm dallying - procrastination is the nurse of good philosophy but bad friendship. I'm here for dear and urgent reasons, Franklin, to say that there is danger rankling back in Philadelphia, a Yankee danger to yourself and all your family imminent and therefore to that shelf of all your continent (that sent you us) where the spark of enlightenment so tenuously flickers - F: Dallying again? H: Yes, fine then!
But who would bring a good friend bad news? The matter is John Hughes, whom for Stamp Officer you nominated - and well-chosen - but the Stamp Act is so hated and gross in your countrymen's eyes that even your wisdom in this makes them despise you. And now, for all your work against it, yet from this single instance they think that your intents were always for the Stamp Act to ratify and they take offense that you would use their confidence to gratify your friends with positions of power and mammon. They think you a liar. And this very hour they clamor to set your house on fire. F: I see. Now, did you know there's a gyre - H: Your Philadelphia neighbors want to burn your house down! F: I heard you the first time round. But what can I say? Shall I send word on a packet ship today? Even if I jumped up and at'em and took myself the next packet out of Falmouth to Manhattan, still that shorter trip out would take longer than the merchant ships' route from London to Rhode Island and do you know why then? H: I'm confused. F: It's because English captains lose time on the ocean. See, there's a motion or a current strong on the American east coast and most strengthened and lengthened just southeast off New England, which my cousin Tim Folger, a Nantucket whaler, has told me holds your typical mail up, stopping and delaying it for days if taken directly unseen. I'm mapping and surveying it. I call it the Gulf Stream. H: How does this keep your house from burning? F: My friend, in '36, I the Union Fire Company started and all the tricks I've learned since then I've so imparted to my wife that whether it was only frankincense or a barn that burned up to the sky still she could stop it faster than I. She's altogether extraordinary. Why, I once knew a young runaway printer so hale he could swim to Manhattan from Staten in winter; so tough he could stand and even climb stairs with a form of types in each hand and no cares in his head except whether bread or beer was better; a man good with his letters; loved by debtors; and so adventurous that his most frivolous contemplation was should he return back to his station in America, or as a vagrant in England linger - and still, my wife, she wrapped this boy around her finger. So don't worry for her, or my house. Worry instead that my countrymen are roused to distrusting me and that is so disgusting me that I must make amends - make them once more my friends by working harder than before. Which brings us back again where we began out off the shore of New York in the Gulf Stream, which I mean to chart and map so that my countrymen will have it for advantage of trade and news. And - considering this matter of John Hughes - so that, when I am next slandered by your Parliament by their malicious rumors sent in the mouths of spies posing as gent- lemen but full of lies to make me filth in my neighbors' eyes and ears back home, to make me out as mud and loam and slime - well I'll be able to send my own damn letter on a packet ship in time. ===== ===== 2. (Franklin's room in the house on Craven Street, London.) H - Hume, F - Franklin, P - Pratt (to enter), S - Mrs Stevenson (to enter) ----- P (entering): Ah, I've interrupted two philosophers! Two officers of the loss of sure plain, solid, firm, and earthy footing for the faeries? While their pudding's waiting, what solace, for- mula or theories are they deliberating? Considering? Why are they dithering? When just outside poor Mrs Stevenson complains in even-hands of jest and frustration that you must be dressed, that the meat is cold, the furniture needs mending, the heater's old, and she can't get in to clean the never-ending mess and mangle of papers ankle- deep that one Benjamin Franklin keeps his room in? Ah, but Hume and he are philosophers! They are not human! S (outside): Not much help, Mr Pratt! F: You, sir, have lessened our session of lofty contemplation, but I will come down in concession to teach you a lesson in chess and humiliation! P: En garde! S (entering): Mr Franklin, there's no time for chess!
You must be dressed! You must eat! You must get your feet out of all these papers so that I may sweep and straighten your room into something a man might live in. I must clean your bed linen. And it's given you're already late for your meeting with Mr Penn in his Spring Gardens estate! F: The English gentleman in his home is never ready when you call. S: What is one is not all, Mr Franklin. F: Now, who's the philosopher! S: For a man so often for- getting his dinner, you should be thinner! And you should be wiser! Move your feet! If you do not let a woman do her work you will despise her! F: So, you have set her on me, Mr Pratt, to distract me? Well, take that! And know exactly that such capture shall aptly bring your chapter on this board to a close - ouch! those are my toes Mrs Stevenson! You are in check, Mr Pratt. Put down that book, Mrs Stevenson!
Don't touch that map! Please, Mr Hume, don't just stand in the room!
I'm under attack here! H: I'm sorry, I was thinking - a daydream about that Gulf Stream you mentioned and a ship I heard sinking - F: So, even Hume is in your confederacy, Mr Pratt! A scout you sent to get the better of me and snatch my concentration while you hatched your cogitations over the board. Well, hatch some more! You are in check again! S: Mr Franklin, you really must go see Thomas Penn! F: As soon as I win. P: You are the noisiest chess player I've ever known - it must be your American bones, Mr Franklin. You colonists are made of rankling and moans and throwing stones. And you yourself would set your rabble firing by your printed babble at our homes and throne and call America your own. F: Fie! and Fiddlesticks! I'm a spineless fat man who lives on Craven Street at 36. And Americans are more English than tea and ships and rain. We speak of King George but to bless - no, now I refrain. Do not tempt me to politics because you're losing at chess! Back to the game!
Check! P: I say you will soon rebel. F: I say we'd rather go to hell than away from Mother England. She could not lose us unless she so abused us severely by tyranny and misuses of power that our hearts nearly broke in our chests - or, in fact, did break and for sheer need of breath and sake of sanity we had to throw her back from the calamity of destroying her own children. But what mother could be so heartless? Indeed, what mother, instead of saying, "darlings mine", would whip and despise her children like kine? P: My friend, your good heart has made you blind. Checkmate. ===== ===== 3. (Thomas Penn's room in his house at Spring Gardens.) T - Thomas Penn, X - William Penn (ancient, victim of a stroke, staring, non-speaking), S - servant girl (outside) ----- T - What do you get when you sit writing maxims instead of taxing and attacking the lax in- dolent In- dians of America? When you sit under oaks for peace with savage chiefs you go broke - that's my belief. That's my belief. The world belongs to who takes her who makes her do what he wants at once, who grabs her and shakes her and with the snap of his fingers brings her to submission by power or fear or grief. That's my belief. And I am a taker, not a Quaker modest like my over-honest father the mistaker of how to write his own damn name! of where to write his own damn name on a paper! To nearly sell off Pennsylvania in his mania for God, and make us the shame and laughingstock and odd- ities of England! What do you get when you're the single largest landowner on Earth but you mingle with those of all birth and creed and treat them as worth- y your bleed- ing over-sentimental heart? You fall apart! You fall to pieces!
Jesus!
How does the chart -ered and chosen receiver of the King's larg- est ocean- like tract of American land end up back in England with nothing in either hand! And you preach tolerance!
And you plant trees! But all of this godliness is just a disease and nonsense and please, by your leave, father, I am done. I am not your son. I am not a Quaker, father, and I don't bother with your Maker, father. I will take your best possession Pennsylvania and squeeze her till she bleeds me iron or gold or lumber or mutton or beef. I want my money from her, and I'm laying hold. That's my belief!
I'll use toll and tariff and levy and rate and I swear up to heaven I will take, I will take. What is God? What is sin? They're the lies you write when you win your bloody battle so that cowards may prattle other braver men from back from attack- ing you again - they're just lies paper thin - and you gave your life to them, but I am - S (outside): Mr Penn? T: Yes? S (outside): Mr Franklin is here. T: I'll be right down there, my dear... I don't need for God to prove me. And I don't have your care for a poor man's respect. But there is money and honor due me and I will collect. ===== ===== 4. (Parlor in Thomas Penn's estate at Spring Gardens.) T - Thomas Penn (to enter), R - Richard Penn, F - Franklin, P - Pratt, H - Hume ----- F: ... and English money confounds! You got quid! You got pounds! You got pence and shillings and silver ounce crowns! And good God, you got bob! And sovereigns and pennies and guineas! Man, use some sense! Give me Simon Stevin's tenths or units and percents! (on Thomas Penn entering) Ah, Mr Penn! Good day to you, Sir! T: Please, relax! As you were! I say to you, wor- thy gentleman, please! Welcome! Be at ease! And what is this teas- ing and pleas- ing discourse I believe I just caught the end of? P: I say it is rot not to stand in the wind of! R: Mr Franklin has got Philippic on mint stuff. F: A passing lament of our grandfathered forms, our coins - our money's too hectic. I'd choose new norms if I could - call it metric. But, alas, we are stood here by past and present collected, both bad and good to inspect and make best with. Speaking of, let me reflect a bit of seriousness and love through my paltry speech to express to you brothers each my admiration for the teach- ing and spirit and legacy of your father. I was sorry to hear it when he left us here to journey on into yonder. May he find the heaven he longed for. H: He was a rare good man. R: May he rest in peace. T: In truth, he was glad to be released. His last years were weary with pain. But now it seems he is near me again - and though no else may believe it yet I think I am not deceived when I say that death did not bereave his sons, that he is held by no tomb, that as he was once he is still somehow with me when I am alone in my room. Now, Mr Franklin, what may I do for you? F: I am sorry to say I am come from New England not just to pay my respects, as would be most decent, but to bring also complex and grievous politics of complaints over recent chang- es to our province of Pennsylvania. T: Problems in Pennsylvania? F: Your admirable nephew, the new governor, in fervor of office takes less view of all the s- olid work of the Assembly than he should and eschews their good laws in favor of ill ones. T: But as he is governor his are the real ones. F: I beg your pardon, Sir, but by your father's charter, Sir, the Assembly was awarded priveleges and powers of rule that afforded us Pennsylvanians our more full involvement in democracy. T: That is not as I see it. The charter - so be it - may say what you claim, but such rights come only by the King's name. F: Then your father was lying? T: There's no use trying, Mr Franklin. I'm not denying he said what was needed to get good sett- lers in Pennsylvania and seed it with homesteads. But the King's charter's no secret. It was up to each man to read it. F: The common people are not lawyers, Sir. T: But they wish to make laws! No, Sir, my father said many things handsome but it was not in his power to grant them. F: Am I to understand then that your father cozened us? Give me a dozen of any other grand men and pile their cousins up with them in a heap, and I'd preach them each a liar and thief before I'd even speak or whisper half a slander of William Penn. He shook hands with Indians. He tolerated all. He was a Friend and gentleman and braved the walls of the Tower of London several times for his own beliefs; and he laughed to hear it called crime and made no other feel beneath his care though tall he stood. He was full of dar- ing, truth, and good. I cannot believe he would lie for gain's sake, Sir! He is my own son's namesake, Sir! T: The truth is hard in the main to take, good Sir! F: Are you giving up your father's character just for profit, Thomas? T: Mr Franklin, though you may think a month as childhood playmates means we are friends, let this affront to your honor today make amends for my mistake back then in indulging you - I was just a child, mild, and overkind. But now I know your mind and I'm repulsed with you. You are nothing but a coward mewling, and unless you choose one of these dueling pistols from this box you will lose what- ever little honor you've got. I say again you are a coward. I say again you have come, an alien, a savage Pennsylvanian, to bother your betters. I'll give you an hour to write your letters. Then meet me in the garden. F: Fie! and Fiddlesticks! harden yourself to disappointment, Mr Penn. My honor is stung but there's no ointment in sin. I will not duel you. T: Then every man in London will know you are a coward. F: Yes, and tell them I said I own it. That I have long known it. That had I even chosen a pistol I'm sure at that moment it would have blown it- self up in my hand. For I am cursed among man to lack willing for killing or dying for no reason. I do not duel, Mr Penn, because it proves nothing. I do not duel, Mr Penn, Mr Hume, Mr Pratt, because I love the market - it makes me too good a target - I am too fat! ===== ===== 5. (Franklin's room in the house on Craven Street) F - Franklin, S - Mrs Stevenson, H - Hume (to enter) ----- F: What kind of man would pawn a father's honor just for mone- tary gain? would sell a name as high and pi- ous as a pontiff's into shame? would profane the long and honest till of sane and solid law and bill for just a quicker fill- ing of his coffer and still call him- self a proper English gentleman? Sickens me to think of him. Sickened with resent of him. I'd throw him in a ditch and teach a bear to stick its... claws in him. I'd saw a rosined fiddlestick across his open eyes - I despise that man! S: Of course you do. You are you, and wise enough for all the stuff you'd like to do but not for all you must. You've too much trust - too much be and let be. You've not yet got your head well-whett- ed to diplomacy, and you are almost hopelessly American. F: You mean that I am raw? S: I mean that you are aw- fully earnest. That you've learned to give your word and keep it. That you're burned up less by insult than by wrong and that your creed is get along until you can't. You don't understand that - H (rushing in): Pitt has agreed to meet you! F: William Pitt? H: No, the peach you ate last week and spat in- to the street is patting at the door for you and me. An olive that came all the way from Galli- lee is here to see you with its seed. The cherry you buried and the apcricot you haply bought now want to plant themselves and be your trees. F: The great man! William Pitt! Never idle! My spies tell me their making a title for him to call him Earl of Chatham! When can he meet!? Where!? H: Now! After a cabinet meeting across the square by Downing 10. F: Take that, Thomas Penn! You may scorn your father dead but you will dread the just and temperate William Pitt and flake like rust into a bit of nothing at his reprimand. He takes no care for title but for quality of man. And I think you shall not stand even the being near to him or of looking too intently into the glare of him. (Franklin and Hume rush out.) S: As I said, Mr Franklin, you are hopelessly American. ===== ===== 6. (Coffee parlor.) W - Pitt, F - Franklin, H - Hume ----- W: Welcome, Mr Franklin, Mr Hume. H: Mr Pitt. F: Mr Pitt, sir, I am smitten. I would have a picture painter fix your face within a frame with mine while we sit in- side this tin- y coffee shop and speak, us three honest keep- ers of their king's and peop- le's interest, myself the raw and simplest and Hume the mentally nimblest but You the princely friend to us, the gentleman de- fend- er trust- ing God and English doughtiness to break us out from violence of Indians and French. You rescued us Americans. You are the bench- mark in our debates of wit of great- ness without arrogance, of genteel English grit. Indeed, I'd have a frame of this! May I call in a painter while we sit? W: I trust not a man that flatters, Mr Franklin. H: Indeed! What matters and what makes men follow you is just such wisdom. But call you not sycophancy, I beseech you, what I as a friend can see to be no more than Franklin's frank and endlessly disarming self-love. It's an American trait we aren't possessed of here in our islands. F: I am the guest of an English lion, s- o of course I must try and remember it! Treasure it! Revel a little in the pleasure, if I can! You must understand, sir, that you are a great man, and I am an aging runaway printer. You'll be remembered and in your halls will be portraits of you that men of fame and fortune will view and I admit that I, too, would like to be seen and admired even after I'm soil. What better way than beside you in oil? W: You're serious are you? Ha! Well, I'm sorry to mar y- our hopes, good philosopher, but I must postp- one your offer until a time better, though I've probab- ly never been quite so pleasur- ably delight- ed by what is essentially narcissism. What is it then you called it, Mr Hume? Self-love? You m- odern thinkers somehow make the best of what every- one else calls sin. Though here again in Franklin it is something new, something of the blind emotion reasoned true and straight - I guess I'll just settle on your notion, Mr Hume, that it's an American trait. And I find it rather agreeable and winning for now though the ends are not always foreseeable from the beginning somehow. Please, let's not sit down. I'm sorry to treat you rudely with my time and I'd be pleased to meet you each again if you'll dine with me tomorrow. I'll be politer then, but for now I must borrow only a few minutes of your afternoon. In fact I came to ask of you something Mr Franklin. F: Of me? Of course, sir. W: I'd be warier to promise. Though I'm glad to find you honest - and I admit that's why I called us here together - yet I wonder whether you're not too sincere for political endeavor - What do you think of me, Mr Franklin? You find me old and decrepit, am I indeed the lion you expected? F: Sir, a man is not his age but his character. And that he wears upon his manner and in his eyes. Indeed, had no man or woman ever told me lies or truths of the name William Pitt, even from just this brief meeting I'd leave believing it to be the case that I had looked upon the face of one good man both stern and true. H: Or maybe two? Ahem. W: Very well, Mr Franklin, then I will speak plainly. You must not blame me for knowing you have secret evidence showing grave malevolence on part of Hutchinson, Oliver, and Penn against your countrymen in America. F: How do you know that, sir! You must not know that, sir! H: Is that true? W: And as you have just called me an upright man I will trust my own insight then enough to think that you are too, and that you want freedom and tough- ness of all our English empire as much as I do and you'll agree when I say that this is worth temporary personal setback. If you'll accept that, then here is my petition: I ask you to give me of your own volition all the letters and correspondence you have between those men of their intentions dark and ponderous against America. Hold nothing back for yourself in doubt. F: Sir, I need a way out of what you ask! what you're after! It's disaster! It's the end of all my past- however many careful months of strategy gone up in the flash and tragedy of the only man who could ask of me not to do it, now asking me not to do it! What can I say? Those letters are the bulk of my argument. My evidence! They are the revelatory thunderbolt for parliament when I step ins- ide the house next week to speak. Without them I am not just weak, I am bluster and nothing, done. I am a fool in fron- t of a hun- dred English gentleman who are all my betters and who will laugh at me without those letters and who will never have anything to do with me again. W: It is very likely, my friend. But that is what I am asking of you, I'm sorry to say. F: Very well, sir. You will have them all before the end of the day. ===== ===== 7. (Franklin's room in the house on Craven Street.) F - Franklin, H - Hume, P - Pratt (to enter) ----- (Franklin and Hume entering.) H: Of all of the evidence in this affair to keep from a friend to have letters from Oliver, Hutchinson, and Penn somewhere and never mention it! What kind of friendship is this you've imported from America? Is this character? Is this alliance? F: Is this contrivance? You will not see them no matter how you accuse me and it's not that I'm refusing but that the in- stant and chance has passed - while you were loosing your last invectives on me while we came from the carriage I discreetly passed directions through a note carried in the baker's son's hands to Mrs Stevenson, who has even this minute sent my packet and everything in it to Mr Pitt. I am undone! H: Have you no summaries or notes of the material? F: Had I even some of the most serious imperial slander they wrote in my pocket I'd have sent it too. You heard me give my word to Mr Pitt that's what I'd do. H: He's cheated you!
 F: No, he protects the empire. H: He has made you a liar without evidence! F: No, he's taken the letters and correspondence and my best chance of accomplishing anything here and left me without help - but he has not made me a liar either for only I have the power to do that myself. I still speak truth. H: But now without proof! Which is enough for me but not for parliament! F: Indeed, I am spent. Without those letters my intent- ions are the lint in a hungry man's handbag - both of us fantasizing things grand and plenteous and substantive that would satisfy us except we're clutching emptiness - P (entering): Franklin! They've called parliament tomorrow morning to hear your final warning and appeal on the matter of repeal- ing the Stamp Act. F: That's not till next week! P: But they say it's tomorrow that you must speak! F: Ah, so Mr Pitt did indeed have his need and his plan! To speak to me man to man that I might know he would show his support in sudden parliamentary attack! For by virtue of the unexpected meeting those members without time for fact before the proceeding will look to him for how they should vote! We can carry through the repeal!
 P: No, Franklin. I'm sorry but here is a note!
They aim to bury you unless you kneel. F: It says that Mr Pitt is sick! He cannot come! He cannot walk even with his stick and he is dumb for loss of his voice to coughing! But how can he be when just two hours ago we met him for coffee! That is... H: So you see they have you. P: No, they don't! Now, I admit I know not in what sense but I have heard in worth- y circles that Franklin has evidence that will hurt those jackals worse than they'll put countenance on without voting away the - H: The evidence is gone. Franklin just met Pitt today and gave it all away to him. P: All? But why? H: It went like this: Pitt asked and Franklin said aye, yes, of course, God bless. He thought Pitt could be trusted. P: Trusted? What kind of rustic has America trussed us up with? Do you know nothing of democracy, Franklin? H: You see they have you Franklin. With your evidence gone and the meeting sprung upon you without time to prepare they know you won't dare to even attend. They win because you're not even in the room with them. You can plead off sick or vic- tim of some wound or even just busy with greater affairs of state, which is popular of late, and they won't blame you or try to shame you in any way. To them this is all fair-play and they've actually beaten you as gently as they could by moving the meeting day so you don't have to show up - no Englishman would. F: Indeed, no Englishman would... Surely no worthy gentleman here would risk his name and title for so small and childish a thing as truth, as democracy, as speaking up for those who could not be there and who sent him in stead, as facing the over-dread- ed horror of social shame to carry out the plain and simple charge of those he represented. An Englishman would resent it and he would not stand there for his peers to stare at him and swear at him, but I'm beginning to realize I'm not so English... I am American. ===== ===== 8. (The House of Commons.) F - Franklin, X - Parliamentary Representatives, non-speaking ----- F - Honourable gentlemen, I present an in- dependent but perhaps not yet impertinent point of view to you, and I offer intimate and heartfelt truths if you will hark them though through a lowly Pennsylvanian alien they come. I am the son of Josiah Franklin, a boy sired in England at Ecton. I have worked with the pressmen at Watt's here in Lincoln Inn Fields and I've taught good friends how to swim with the eels in the Thames. I mean to say that I feel myself an Englishman - or so have felt until some recent welts of politics dealt unto my bucolic wits by certain learned and polished gent- lemen of this house have roused in me some doubts as to whether I truly belong. And now I make of myself a strong analogy for some people along an entire shelf of land across the sea that we for present purposes can call Americans - Americans like me. First, this is importantly stated: that Americans are loyal, loyal like no others. But not loyal even unto our mothers nor fathers, nor even loyal unto the royal king nor his prerogatives, as much as to truth and light and democracy, to the even God-proof right of the individual to believe and be what he thinks best so long as he does not over-molest nor harm the rest of mankind. In fine, that a man who would be above others must be elected and that even the lowliest man must be respected. Second, that we are long forbearing. We on the frontier are used to sharing our hearths and hard- ships and every part of our trade and knowledge and effortfulness with each other, for upon us are pressed the fathomless lawless- ness of nature, the danger of Indians, and the manifest re- ality - not strange e- thereal thought but fact - that we must stand back to back to survive, and to thrive we must rely on each other. Therefore we rarely mutter, we endure much, we worship trust and tough- ness, and we help whom we can no matter what. In short, each man among us can hold up his house with his hands and together we make Atlas ashamed where stands. But last I must say - and this most important - we are not so unfortunate in spirit that we endure this brokenly - no, we endure it openly for each other's sakes. Yet, I begin to fear it that this island mistakes our much patience for little will. Your passage of the Stamp Act makes me think so further still. As I said when I began I am a man who considered myself quite English until you told me I wasn't. You called me cousin not brother, and said I couldn't claim England for mother but only kin. Beware of saying so again! Beware of what you say to an American for he is not by nature much political but more of a neighbor simple and uncritical. He will take you at your word. So, say I do not belong at your table, say that my place is taxes and obeisance, say what you can while you are able but say it with faintest of breath, for should it be heard and you should rouse me - if you should rouse America - you will see a foundling come into his inheritance, a sword drawn from a stone, a nation born not by merest chance of history but by man's allegiance to his own true principles of right and reason and loyalty to the id- eal that men treat each other before God as they should. If you would see my might, if you, Cousin England, would provoke me, if you would try to yoke me to what I know is not good - Cousin England if you want a fight - I wish you would! ===== ===== (iv) Historical Notes and Liberties Until about the decade before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin was an imperialist. His father was from England and he himself had lived in England as a young apprentice pressman learning his trade before moving back to Philadelphia. Even at that time he had considered staying in England permanently. By the time of the Stamp Act in 1765, Franklin had made a name for himself as a scientist, philosopher, and public leader, and he was serving as agent for Pennsylvania in London. The Stamp Act was passed. It was reviled in America. Franklin was called before the House of Commons to give his opinion on the repeal of the Stamp Act - his language was at times rather forceful and even prophetic of revolution, but not quite as openly challenging as that of Scene 8 in this play. William Penn was a Quaker - a persecuted religion in England in the 17th century - and was imprisoned in the Tower of London on several occasions until, perhaps to get rid of him and his Quaker friends, King Charles II granted him the land that came to be known as Pennsylvania. Penn was highly progressive in his hopes for the colony. His Frame of Government of Pennsylvania strongly influenced the American Constitution (also written in Pennsylvania). Penn suffered a stroke and died at the opening of the 18th century. This play takes the liberty that such was only a story, that he actually survived in a vegetative state to be tormented by his son Thomas - rather unlikely since he would have been well over 100 years old by the time of the Stamp Act. This play also suggests that Thomas visited America in his boyhood with his father where he met Franklin, which is also unlikely. Sometime before the American revolution Franklin came into possession of letters between Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson and his secretary Andrew Oliver, in which they rankled against the rights of colonists. The letters were eventually published in America. They caused public outcry and increased momentum for the coming revolution. This play takes the liberty that there were originally more letters, that some were written by Thomas Penn, that Franklin gave them all to William Pitt who destroyed certain letters for political reasons but returned those remaining to Franklin later (beyond the scope of the play).